


Cinders Aching for Flame

by lotuskasumi



Series: Emily/Outsider: Weak for you alone. [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Sensual Tension, Storytelling, tfw You don't know if you're ready to kiss your eldritch suitor yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 10:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8621368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotuskasumi/pseuds/lotuskasumi
Summary: The Outsider stopped pacing and stood in front of Emily’s bed, watching her with a stare like a hook.Once upon a time, Emily swore she would never look him in the eye for longer than it took to blink. Now she had to remind herself just as often, and with just as much intensity, to look away.“Tell me,” she said, weaving softness into the command.How strange, how quick, and how eager he was to obey.---Emily asks for a story. What she gets is a gift.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I took some liberties with Pandyssia in this, because I always pictured it like Avalon crossed with fairyland, only ten times as sinister.

The Outsider was getting bolder. Before, Emily would have to hike it to a shrine if she wanted to meet him face to face. Now he simply appeared when she had a spare moment to herself, mostly in the evenings after dinner. She had even begun to pencil him in on her schedule. _Dinner. Quick bath. OS chat. Visit mother’s gazebo. Bed._

It was an exception to his rules that neither he nor Emily regarded lightly, though they said little about it. It was simply a fact that lay between them, like her mark, hidden beneath her bone white gloves, and the kiss he had given her some weeks past.

Emily thought that all these things–the kiss, the song, and now the personal visits–meant that he was, in some way, curious about creating a kind of foothold in her life to make up for her lack of a shrine. And yet, when the subject of making her own personal altar came up, the Outsider was quick to dismiss it.

“The current arrangement works well enough for us both,” he said, waving aside her protests. “After all, it’s not as if I pay a visit to every shrine set up for me across the Isles, no matter who tends it.”

“So I guess I just got lucky all those times back when Delilah was alive?” Emily laughed.

“That,” he said, his tone almost clipped, “was different. That was unique.”

Emily shrugged. “Good, because I really didn’t feel like setting up my own altar, anyway. With my luck, someone was bound to stumble across it and then I’d _really_ be in trouble.”

“Aren’t you now?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“Should I be?” she fired back, offering a wicked smile that he found worryingly endearing.

There was some secrets even he didn’t understand.

* * *

One evening, as Emily sat on her bed drying out her hair, she saw black smoke creeping across her mirror. She turned and watched as the floor of her bedroom stretched out, languid and long like a sunbathing cat, opening a bridge from her side to the Void.

The Outsider appeared. Just like that, and just as fast, there he was, waiting to speak.

To her credit, Emily barely blinked. She was almost used to this by now.

“Tell me a story,” she said, running her fingers through her long, still damp hair.

He smiled. The Outsider was used to her habits, too. Emily was often probing him for information, and he was happy to oblige, happier still to find a curious audience to pour out the long years of his life.

“Of what? Ambition? Betrayal?” The Outsider clasped his hands behind his back and began a slow, measured pace around her fragmented room. Emily noticed he was watching her closely, and she swung her hair over her face like a dark curtain to shield her smile.

He continued. “How about petty thieves whose bold heists lead them to mysteries beyond their worth and ken?”

“You sound like you came prepared with that one,” she said.

“Should I take that as a sign of interest?”

“Yes, you should.” Emily picked up the fine tooth comb from her bed–not the whale bone one; she made sure to get rid of that when the Outsider’s eyes had spied it with a furious glare and twist of his mouth–and slowly ran it through her hair. The sigh of it cut through the silence.

The Outsider stopped pacing and stood in front of Emily’s bed, watching her with a stare like a hook.

Once upon a time, Emily swore she would never look him in the eye for longer than it took to blink. Now she had to remind herself just as often, and with just as much intensity, to look away.

“Tell me,” she said, weaving softness into the command.

How strange, how quick, and how eager he was to obey.

“A long time ago,” the Outsider began, his voice clever and quick and warming her the way wine always did, “deep in the wild heart of Pandyssia there was a sunken cave. It led to the purest pale blue jewel the world had ever seen. It was called the Tearstone. Artists dreamed of it, jewelers labored bitterly to imitate it, but none ever came close to compare. It was a powerful trinket that was said to bring luck to its owner in their darkest hour, and so it became the object of desire for bandits and ne'er-do-wells alike.

"Two thieves from Gristol, Tasha and Drace, vowed to find the Tearstone and share in its wealth. For over eleven years they decided their lives to the task, and they cheated, lied, tricked, and knifed their way through secrets and aboard ships, into coffers and cargo holds and even crypts. Anything to find even the smallest information that might help their ambition.

"Then one day, their hard work and ill-deeds bore fruit. The two bandits chartered a boat across the clear, unbroken sea to Pandyssia and to the Tearstone waiting beyond. As they landed, Drace, usually so calm and focused, slowly began to change.”

Emily’s hand froze, her comb’s teeth pulling hard at her almost dry hair. The Outsider was sitting on the edge of her bed, close enough to touch, but his posture was like iron. He smelled of it, too. Faintly, yes, and not entirely unpleasant.

“It started as a murmur in their ear,” he continued, turning his head to keep his unfathomable black eyes locked onto Emily’s. “And soon it became a buzzing they couldn’t ignore. Bad dreams plagued Drace in the night, and they were haunted by weeping stones, mouths in the dirt and earth, and an ash awakened from the deep sea, cinders aching for flame.

"Terrified, Tasha hid the worst of her fear beneath the brave mask that Drace so dearly loved. And late one night, after she had sung her lover to sleep with the sweetest Serkonos lullaby she could dare to remember in that deep and ancient dark, she set out alone. The Tearstone, Tasha reasoned, was a powerfully fearsome thing, less to be owned than it was needing to be tamed. And tame it she would, before it broke her beloved in two.”

Emily set down the comb and cinched her robe’s belt tighter around her waist. She was suddenly very keenly aware of how all she had on beneath the rose gold silk was an undershirt and small lace-fringed shorts. _Does he know?_ Can _he know?_ She counted down from ten in her head and forced her breathing to steady itself. If she could sit pantsless at her desk and conduct a meeting with a visiting diplomat, she could endure _this._

“And so,” the Outsider said, a quick, wicked flash crinkling the skin around his black eyes, “our intrepid Tasha wandered into the night.”

A slow, lazy smile curled at the edge of his lips as he spoke. Emily chewed on the inside of her cheek, glad her skin was dark enough to hide a blush.

“She stumbled on the bared bones of the earth, kicked up broken jaws and amulets of teeth that whispered songs last heard in the cradle.”

A shiver rippled down Emily’s spine. She folded her arms over her chest, keenly aware of the goosebumps prickling along her skin.

“Pandyssia, she decided, was a leviathan, eyeless, voiceless, yet a dreadnought to any who dared disturb it. And she would just have to endure it. She had come too far to do any less now.”

 _Is that what’s happening here?_ Emily wondered, examining the Outsider with a quick gaze. _Am I too far to go back from what we’ve unleashed?_ She waited for fear to find her, but there was nothing close to fear inside her–her thoughts were still, quiet, with a clarity that she hadn’t felt since saying yes to his very first gift.

“At last, Tasha came to a clearing wreathed in fog, ivy, and ash. She smelled cold iron and moondust in the air, and in her shivering heart she vowed to be like both.”

“How does that work?” Emily asked. The sound of her own voice was a comfort, even now. It pulled her from the full depth of the trance that his voice always lulled her into.

The Outsider picked up Emily’s comb and ran his fingers along its teeth. “A vow to make your will iron-hard and unwavering,” he said, admiring the filigree design. “A prayer to be as enduring and constant as the moon.” He looked up at Emily and tilted his head, suddenly alert. They were sitting close enough to touch, yet only Emily’s knees grazed against his thigh, and even then it was barely so.

“Then what happened?” she asked, her voice strangely distant.

“Tasha found the Tearstone in a pond that was once an ocean, and the jewel was powerless to stop her hand from snatching it out of its cradle of bog water and unspoiled ore.

"Back at camp, Drace fell into a black fever. Tasha struggled for hours to get them both back to shore, all the while praying to the Tearstone to work its magic. All alone she raised the sails and steered their ship away from Pandyssia. All alone, hungry in her bones for mercy, Tasha defied her fears as Drace thrashed and screamed.”

Emily had to give him credit. The Outsider had quite the way with words–though she supposed he had all the time in the world to find the most effective way to express himself. Her heart pounded fast, straining against her chest as if she were the one running blind and desperate. She could all too easily imagine the wild, sinister wonder of Pandyssia, and the breathless, tearful struggle as Tasha fought to find safety again. It was barely six months ago when she lived that very horror for herself– _again_.

 _Maybe that’s why he chose this story,_ she thought, closing her hands to keep from reaching out to him. _Maybe it reminded him of me._

“For three days they saw nothing at sea,” the Outsider said, his voice low. It was almost warm and soothing. “On the fourth day, a fog rolled in, and Tasha wept in defeat. Their supplies were low, and Drace was starved for both a meal and a cure. With her hopes thin and little choices left, Tasha used her blood as bait and cast out the line.

"And just then, in the thieves’ darkest hour, something changed.” Slowly, so slowly, with a tenderness she never expected to see from him, The Outsider reached for her hair. He slid his fingers through the dark, pin-straight fold, his expression as curious as a bird peering out of its nest for the first time.

His simple touch sent a shiver up through Emily’s chest and down the notches of her spine. Impulsively, instinctively, she leaned into his touch.

The Outsider’s voice was a whisper that warmed her bones and made her legs weak. “A maid came flying out of the sea, her mouth torn by the hook of Tasha’s bloodied bait. She was a woman from the neck up and waist down, coated in gleaming opal scales. She took one look at Tasha with her milk white eyes, and the thief knew right away that she furious–but not without reason.

”‘Once,’ the fish maid said, 'when Pandyssia was an ocean on the earth, my family buried a precious stone deep in the caves of our ancestors. I see it there pinned to your hair, as bold as blood and burnished brass. Not only do you steal from me, now you maim me as well. Do all humans have no shame?’

“'Please,’ Tasha sobbed, and she pointed at Drace at her feet. 'It’s my companion–they’re sick. I can’t let them die.’”

Emily’s eyes prickled with tears. The Outsider’s voice was the perfect imitation of a broken heart pleading for mercy. _How could he know how that felt? Had he ever felt it before?_ The questions burned like coals in her thoughts. She had to know, she had to–and yet she didn’t ask.

Carefully brushing through her hair once more, the Outsider wet his lips and continued. “The fish maid was moved to pity for the smallest second. 'Your love has the dreaming disease,’ she said. 'A mark of the guilty who trespass where the ancients weep.’

”'How do I save them?’ Tasha wept, for she was desperate and all but ready to bow to despair.

“'Spare me your tears,’ the maid said, her teeth showing beneath the wound in her cheek. 'I’ve only come looking for the one.’

"Tasha understood at once what she had to do. She took the Tearstone in her hands and ripped it from her hair. The bald spot left behind wept with fresh blood, but Tasha was too driven to notice the pain.

"The fish maid took the Tearstone in her mouth and pushed it into the hook wound slit. It gleamed inside her torn flesh, and her once murky blood now ran a clear rose gold. Brilliant, blinding, bright.

"It was Drace’s voice that pulled Tasha from her trance. 'Where is it?’ they asked, their voice weak from waking and weariness. 'The Tearstone, what happened to it?’

”'Gone,’ Tasha said. 'Back home, where it belongs.’

“'Tasha, love, your hair–it’s torn.’

"Weeping again, for a wholly different reason this time, Tasha kissed her lover with every bit of strength she had and said, 'And you, my heart, are alive. What’s a little blood shed for that?’”

Emily waited, swaying where she sat. The air was thick with words unspoken and those eager to be said. “That’s it?” she asked.

A pang of regret resonated through her as the Outsider stood up and began pacing again. He folded his arms and said, “That’s it. The End.”

Emily considered his story for all of thirty seconds before an argument moved from her brain to her tongue. “How did the Tearstone save their lives?” she asked. “You said that’s what it did, but it doesn’t sound like it had any power at all. Unless it called up that fishwoman.”

The Outsider smile had a whip’s sharp quickness. Emily never knew she could like a lash hidden in a grin. “It didn’t save them,” he said, “not as much as Tasha did. She had to be brave enough to save both herself and her lover. And that, Lady Emily, is the lesson to learn. Lives are precious only to those who live them, and they should never fall prey to superstition.”

Emily’s stomach twisted with a familiar lurch of dread. There was something odd about a figure of legend badmouthing other things from myths, and she told him so.

The Outsider’s responding smile was thin, brief, and unmistakably proud. Had she passed some kind of test? “You could say I make a careful study on this subject,” he said. “Especially given recent… events.”

Emily laughed once, a single, lonely sound. “Fair point,” she admitted. She stood up and counted every careful step she took to her wardrobe. A part of her was amused that it was here, in tact, and containing her usual array of breeches, white shirts, and high-collared black blouses. Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror on her wardrobe door, Emily watched as the Outsider turned away from her, giving her some small bit of privacy. It was almost sweet–if such a thing were possible.

Once she was dressed again, Emily cleared her throat. The Outsider glanced over his shoulder, his face more oddly rigid and wooden.

“So what happened to the Tearstone?” she asked. “Or did it ever really exist?”

Moving at the speed of sighs and with the sinuous grace of ink in water, the Outsider appeared in front of her. He tore through the air with his usual smoke shadow quickness. Before Emily could react, he ran his long fingers along the edge of her left ear. Quick as a blink, he pulled something from the dark folds of her ink black hair and held it out in a slow flourish.

Speechless, each breath rattling against her ribs, Emily stared down at his hand. It was the Tearstone.

“I’m sorry to say that Tasha was wrong once again,” he laughed. “The Tearstone needs neither owner nor tamer, but a kindler. Someone more of fire than blood. Someone… impossible.”

The Outsider took Emily’s hand and gently placed the jewel on her palm. Once he had closed her fingers over the pale blue stone, he stepped back, tearing his touch from her skin.

Emily closed her eyes and held her breath. She knew without looking up that the Outsider was gone.

* * *

The days passed, and Emily’s duties weighed heavily on her heart, but the story of the Tearstone still haunted her thoughts. She could hear the soft sighs of the ancient sea and the gentle hums of the lightless deep each time she held the Tearstone in her hand. At night she dreamed of mouths in the earth, its jaws open wide. She was prepared to hear a scream, but instead she heard songs. They were singing for her.

“Weak for you alone,” they said, in a voice Emily has long come to recognize and privately adore. It was a warm voice that moved through her like wine, a voice that needed neither shrines nor sacrifices to find its way to her side.

In Emily’s dreams, the ancient earth of Pandyssia sang wordless and violet sweet songs as odes. In her dreams, she walked in the old ocean on the earth, and sank her hands into the primal and perilous sea. Instead of stones or shells, she found ash, choking, starved, and water-defiant. It was the type of ash so lost and old and long grown cold that it didn’t even have a flame to fall from.

_Like a god without a name._

In these dreams, Emily took every black, trembling mound of dust in her hands and kissed them to cinders, giving life back to the great and lonely deep. “Lives are precious to those who love them, too,” she said, stoking the cinder-starved ash into a proper flame.

And in the Void, far enough away from her dreams for privacy, yet only a breath and a blink from her side, the Outsider shivered. Somehow, some way, strangely, the ghost of Emily’s lips warmed him in the ancient dark of his heart.

There were some secrets even he didn’t understand.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hey I found a way to work the series title into the fic.


End file.
